Það er margt sem myrkrið veit,
minn er hugur þungur.
Oft ég svarta sandinn leit
svíða grænan engireit.
Í jöklinum hljóða dauðadjúpar sprungur.
There is much that darkness knows,
My mind is heavy.
Often I’ve seen the black sand
Scorching green meadows.
In the glacier rumbles deadly deep cracks.
Eventually, Beth had stopped crying. She’d gotten to her feet and moved to the sink to wash the sorrow off her face.
Una had returned to her cleaning, but not before noticing the stack ofAmerican Babymagazines in the cabinet under the sink. They were all worn and water-wrinkled, as if Beth sat in the tub, paging through them over and over again, seeing her future child in every fair-haired, dimple-cheeked cherub. She read about diaper rash and milestones until the water turned cold. Then she’d pull the plug, letting gravity take her dreams and the dirty water down into the dark.
Unlike her other clients, Beth had never given Una a key.
“Who knows what you’d walk in on?” Beth had teased. “If I don’t come to the door, and you see Don’s car in the driveway, you might have to wait outside for a few minutes if you know what I mean.”
Today, Don’s car—a boxy look-at-me red sports car—was in the driveway. This meant Una had to wait.
The sun slanted through the old dogwood tree in the Pulaskis’ front yard, dappling Una’s face with light and shadow. The chiaroscuro effect softened the lines around her eyes and mouth, transforming her from a sixty-two-year-old housecleaner to the young bride who’d immigrated to the US from an Icelandic fishing village three decades ago.
Even now, after all this time, she still rejoiced in the feel of sunlight on her skin. She was eternally the cat, seeking a square of sunshine. She spent her childhood yearning for this bone-warming light. She’d read about it in books. Her unclespoke of it when he shared tales of his travels. He’d been to many places. He’d met Mickey Mouse in Florida and climbed the Statue of Liberty all the way up to her crown. He’d ridden in taxis and visited museums. He’d eaten at a Burger King and slept at a Howard Johnson’s. He made it sound like everything about America glowed. Everything was bigger and brighter. Even the sun.
Una pictured her uncle on a stool close to the fire, packing his pipe with work-worn fingers. She could see the wisps of smoke rise toward the rafters and smell the peaty scent of his tobacco. As she sank into an ocean of memories, her eyelids grew heavy.
She hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Every morning, she woke sticky with sweat. Her tongue was dry as sandpaper and her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
She couldn’t remember her dreams, but she knew they were troubled. Something was calling to her from that other place—that close but faraway place where the mind wanders in the small hours of the night. She felt the echoes of this other world even after she woke up—disturbances in her psyche where things from the dream place had latched onto her like a sucker fish.
It had been a long time since she’d taken a nap, but she allowed her stiff neck and knotted shoulders to relax deeper into her seat. Her breathing slowed. She concentrated on the vision of smoke curling out of her uncle’s pipe and her father’s laughter, which sounded like an avalanche of snow. She could see his eyes, the blue of a frozen fjord, sparkling with merriment. His beard wagged like a sheep’s tail as he chortled and slapped his thigh.
In the memory, he was wearing his favorite sweater—the one Mamma made for him last winter. There was a hole in the elbow and another where his collarbones met. A fishhookhad landed there, biting into the weave, stretching and pulling until the wool finally gave way.
Pappi.
Una’s dream self yearned for her father to see her, to turn away from his brother and cast a smile in her direction.
The image shifted, and the little room in her amma’s turf house disappeared. Una and her father were on the deck of his fishing boat. The sea was a wild stallion, bucking and kicking. Waves rose like mountains, blotting the horizon as they tried to soak the clouds. White foam bubbled from the curling crests, making Una think of rabid animals. The only thing between her and the hungry waves was the thick wood of Pappi’s boat.
Without warning, the bow dipped.
Una would’ve been thrown forward onto her face had she not grabbed a rope and wound it around and around her forearm.
Pappi shouted something, but Una couldn’t hear him over the banshee shriek of the wind. She turned his way, slitting her eyes against the rain, and saw him gesture at the port side of the boat.
She followed his gaze but saw nothing but churning water. The sky had darkened to the same shade as the sea. The clouds were thick as porridge.
When she looked back at her father, his mouth was stretched into an oval of fear.
